


Hold up the mirror

by laughingpineapple



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Ancient History, Gen, Lectures, Worldbuilding, beleaguered historian THIS close to throwing the whole society in the trash and starting over, canon-typical denial of queer people existing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27955667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: Hope and freedom in the Downside: oral histories, government censorship, fragments, apocrypha and a primary source politely waving hello.
Relationships: Gol Golathanian/Soliam Murr
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Hold up the mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UnderSnowVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderSnowVixen/gifts).



They would grow to know Volfred’s lectures, in time. On occasion, they would even grow to love them. But this was still early days, so when their new Reader came back to camp with a big smile and a youthful spring in his roots, and addressed the minstrel in the old tongue to make what sounded like chipper small talk, just to brush up on the language, Erisa and Oralech were caught off-guard. What’s up, prof, they asked, amused by this display of ill-fitting geniality that barely concealed a secret of some sort, a thrill, a confident euphoria.

The reason for his cheer, it turned out, was an old slab of stone he’d gone through great lengths to obtain, and there it was, at last, cradled in his arms. Imagine: the Downside, for all its hardships, held ancient writing no-one would round up and destroy. So what was it, this historian’s treasure? A declaration, lost knowledge of the sciences, Scribe-dictated laws?

The carvings were as old as the voices of the Scribes themselves, he believed, but no: love poetry, and a fragment, at that. See, said Volfred, reverent, even tender with the stone in a way they’d never seen him act with them, Tariq nor even Ti’zo. Here the poet compares their beloved to radiant Soliam Murr. Here, a cascade of dark hair. This other word, which survives alone, is Oathtaker, which we know to be the shield wielded by the Master-General. Remember when we walked on the shore of Solis, writes the poet, in the footsteps of the Two among the Eight, and in this mirroring our lips met and our love echoed theirs, and as they shall one day ascend to the Stars, so shall our bond, as it shines in their image. Forgive the rough translation. The poet’s name was lost.

That’s nice?, offered Oralech. Love in this land was so very rare. And Oralech would learn, in time, that Volfred’s enthusiasm unfailingly takes the form of an outpouring of words, that if there is something urgent to be done, like chopping tubers or setting a course, it takes some firm boundaries to dam the incoming lecture. But this was early days and his little supportive nod was even articulated in the form of a question, so, whether he was asking for further explanations or not, further explanations were indeed what he got.

It happened, said Volfred as if addressing an audience from a tribune, that the life of the Nomad Scribe was always one of his areas of interest in academia, along with Saint Triesta Tithis, although perhaps for different reasons. Golathanian was, as per the teachings of the third Archjustice, an “inverted prism” of loyalty, receiving it from so many, projecting it all toward one single object: an inspiration in all matters of resilience, to withstand such enormous pressure, and focus as well. All documents pertaining to his life – paintings, statues, plays… ...books, he added in a conspiratorial voice – could only date back to his time at court and on the battlefield, at the head of his golden legions. Back then, in the Empire, Soliam Murr was the last corrupt, decadent offspring of a corrupt, decadent lineage, the source of the rot that spoiled the land. What did Golathanian see in him? Perhaps nothing more than what was required of his office, one might infer, as first he followed his Emperor’s orders with his life and then, as soon as the Emperor went missing, he Empire’s regent ordered him to find and kill his former liege and he did not hesitate to take on that task. Duty above all, and indeed duty is what he stands for in the Commonwealth’s iconography, his lasting impression. A role model for those who pledge their lives to causes bigger than themselves, a cautionary tale for others who question the institutions which ask for this kind of loyalty. For some, both at once. But, is there not something amiss? We know now, in His very words, that when he could have struck the mortal blow, nay, when he could have stood still and witnessed the Sisters of the Arch accomplish the deed, he sprang to his Emperor’s defense “for the love he felt for him”. No trace of that love remains in the Commonwealth.

Mind you – historians up there had a way of teaching that young Murr famously held a Great Revelry, and no small number of lesser revelries before and after it, and then spend the rest of their day referencing fastidious studies based on culinary habits and textile patterns that proved without the shadow of a doubt, or so they said, that the Emperor only ever sought congress with women, and human women at that.

Throughout the centuries, fragments of the Scribes’ lives in these cursed lands floated up and found their way into the society above. Given how their years in the Downside are those that shaped their place in the heavens as well as the basis of our nation, it should come to no surprise that these apocrypha ended up forming the bulk of our image of the Eight (unless one happens to be into revelries). However: no-one ever officially traced these tales back to their origin. It was clear, from where Volfred and his companions were standing now, that liberated exiles carried stories of the Downside with them, firsthand accounts at first, then the corpus of tales and legends that are unique to this land. But liberated exiles were the Commonwealth’s most treasured secret. Scholars were not allowed to know where the tales came from; they could only record and curate them, and keep their bafflement to footnotes. Many of them, of course, spoke of Gol Golathanian and of the radiant love he shared with his Emperor, transformed now, having shed the stench and grime of decadence, into what the Master-General had perhaps always known to be Soliam Murr’s true self.

That love was clear. Soliam’s for him as well, as chronicled, among others, by the Vigils and by the Tale of the Oar, which you may be familiar with. And the way the stories were told, his was the love of a brother, a friend, a comrade at arms, that is to say, close, but not too close. Volfred remembered the days before the literacy ban, however faintly. He remembered the days he spent paging through all the chapters on the lives of the Scribes, looking for the one that would tell that story like he hoped it would be told, finding none, over and over again, until he wondered if not only his conjecturing were baseless, but if it were not shameful as well, to want to peek into the private lives of these men, the founders of their nation, just to get a reflected glimpse of his own.

Two centuries he’d held onto this hope. And here, carved in this stone: “in this mirroring our lips met and our love echoed theirs.”

They sat in silence, picturing that primordial world, and their own, which sprang from that foundation, until Erisa said, That’s deep, which wasn’t all a mockery of Volfred’s pomp but still enough to break the spell.

Enough for Oralech to add, They would erase this too. He did not say this to douse anyone’s enthusiasms, but there was a deep-set bitterness that tinged all his thoughts of the Commonwealth that had cast him down for daring to call for peace. That was the way things would go, that was the world they lived in (unless someone dared to dream of a better one, but, again, this was still early days, all possibilities still unformed).

Of course he was right, as Oralech often was. Things would go that way, in the world they used to live in, as there was no such thing as proof big enough to overcome a prejudice this vast. They would erase it, discredit or misread it, say that in those days such declarations were common among comrades in arms, among friends and brothers, nothing to see here, move along. The only alternative, in truth, to Commonwealth historians falsely debunking his finding with such claims was that two centuries of academia and six more centuries before his time were in the right all along, this really was a common expression of camaraderie in the Scribes' times and Volfred, for all his air of pragmatism, was an old fool who just saw what he wanted to see. It burned.

Except: If I may, sirs, madam, said the minstrel, faint as the evening mist. They turned to look at him with an air of surprise, easy as it was to lose track of his existence. But he was there then just as he had traveled with the Scribes from the day they climbed down Mount Alodiel and until the night in which they joined the stars, and then carried those memories through centuries of wanderings. He knew, having stood by the Eight and enjoyed their teachings and their friendship, that Soliam Murr and Gol Golathanian were kindred spirits, who found each other in the freedom of the Downside and lived their love fully till their last day. The stone’s carvings spoke a simple truth. If that knowledge could ease your days, Reader, sir, please, allow yourself this comfort, for it is real.


End file.
